Why I will never have an autobiography: my story is so goddamn banal.A couple of recent LJ posts pinged off my memories of the elementary and middle school years. (Here, on phys ed, and here on reading in class - my own contribution is here if you're interested.) It brings back a lot, and as a result I've been giving myself headaches and losing sleep trying to lock the memories back up again.

Look, I don't want to give the impression that my childhood was oh so horrible. I never experienced anything you'd see in, say, a Lifetime movie. Yes, I was picked on, yes, I was an outcast, but I was never afraid to go to school like some kids are and there was never a year I didn't have at least one friend (even if she wasn't in my grade). In a lot of ways I had plenty of advantages. I had my brain and my imagination, and it seemed like that was two more things than any of Them had.

But words leave their marks too, don't they? Long after you think you've left them behind, those old wounds open again, and time's only made them deeper, or maybe I was tougher back then than I am now. I know all the platitudes you drag out at times like this - forgive and forget, a grudge only hurts the one who holds it, let the past go. I'd love to let the past go. The past won't let go of me.

I know I need something - therapy, confrontation, maybe just to hit something - but I really can't afford another mental breakdown right now. Maybe in a few years it'll be safe to go catatonic for a week or so while I grapple with my demons. Right now the best I can do is pack everything back up in the back of my mind again, and hope it doesn't leak too much.

But I had a brief nap today, and I'm feeling better about things. More or less.

I hope it's sunny on Saturday. I want to go to the Cherry Blossom festival then.

Meh, screw that "forgive and forget, a grudge only hurts the one who holds it, let the past go. I'd love to let the past go" garbage. I'm angry, bitter, and petty, and I embrace that. Hell, not trying to fight the angry and bitter has left me in better shape than trying to be all "forgive and forget." It's a lot easier (and better, I think) to go, "OK, so, I'm angry and hurt" and accept it than beat yourself up trying to make peace with it--it's like, we're not taught how to take the bad with the good. I know I was miserable and had horrible insomnia when I was trying to let go of shit and forgive, in some way, someone who frankly did not deserve it. Now I'm like, "No, I'd like them to die in a fiery car accident" and am a lot better off mentally for being able to accept that part of myself.

It's more about making peace with yourself than making peace with the past.

somehow "forgive and forget" makes people who can't feel like there's something wrong with them. there's nothing wrong with you. if something really was bad enough that you can't forgive them, and you've *tried* then you're a good person. the important thing is to try.

after you've seriously done that, and you can't forgive them? then you need to accept that some things really are unforgivable, and give yourself distance between what happened and now.

Seriously. People dwell a lot more when they beat themselves up over "why can't I let it go?" instead of just rolling with "I can't let it go." I've found rolling with it makes things a lot smoother, and when you're not beating yourself up anymore, it suddenly becomes actually easier to deal with.

Rolling with "I'm angry and bitter" has served to actually make me less angry and bitter, because I didn't suppress the bad feelings or assume something was wrong with me for having them still or feel frustrated because I couldn't let things go, and as a result, ended up working through them somehow because I treated all the bad feelings as legitimate feelings. and therefore there was nothing wrong for me having them.

Hell, not trying to fight the angry and bitter has left me in better shape than trying to be all "forgive and forget." It's a lot easier (and better, I think) to go, "OK, so, I'm angry and hurt" and accept it than beat yourself up trying to make peace with it--it's like, we're not taught how to take the bad with the good.

Yes. Not saying that forgiving isn't good when you're ready for it. But your feelings are what they are, so you might as well acknowledge them. Be aware of them (I would say something about "acknowledge them with mindfulness" here, but I don't know how much yogini-speak you can handle), acknowledge them, accept that they are what they are, but at the same time don't let them rule you. (Fine line, I know, and I'm not claiming I'm doing perfectly at it myself, far from it.)

It's more about making peace with yourself than making peace with the past.

Bugger forgiving and forgetting. Cursing them out roundly, proving them wrong - even if it's just by growing into some self confidence - and then forgetting it, that helps a lot better. It's not you that needs to be forgiven for something like that, even if it was 'only' a few bitchy words or somesuch.

*cuddles tight* Hitting something sounds good, at least for the time being. Anything more long-term can come later, yes? *nuzzles and adores*

Yeah, and your cardinal sin was to Not Be Just Like Them. And isn't it sad that they had to pick on people for that when there are so many better causes to put their effort into? Bunch of bored, blood-sucking twatwhistles the lot of them.

Our culture has one hell of a lot to say about negative emotions, such as anger and loss, and why we shouldn't feel them in the majority of circumstances, particularly for women. This is a necessary thing in a cultural sense, since the amount of crap women are handed and told to live with means if we ever get angry and stay angry, the whole thing starts to crumble. So instead we're told we shouldn't be angry about this, or we should "forgive and forget" that, and if we can't, we're the ones at fault for not being able to "let go of the past" and so on. My take on this is as follows: screw it.

If you're angry, acknowledge your anger. Let yourself be angry. Figure out exactly what you're angry about, and exactly how angry you are. Admit your anger is justified (this is usually the hard bit, since the social definition of "justified anger" is highly gendered) and allow yourself to feel it. It's an emotion, just like happiness or joy. It will come and it will go, and if you allow yourself to feel the negative emotions as freely as the positive ones, you'll find they'll come and go sooner. If you want, you can do something practical with the anger, and use it to change the situation you're angry about (if that's possible). But either way, acknowledge your anger, acknowledge what you're angry about, and accept that it hurt you.

Forgiveness is optional. Seeing things from the other person's perspective is optional as well. What isn't optional is accepting that you felt angry, that you were justified in feeling angry, and that no matter what the other person's perspective was, this does not make your anger any less legitimate.

School is a profoundly fucked-up experience for anyone who doesn't fit the template of "normal" (white, male, middle or upper-middle class, protestant christian background). Most people know and understand this. What we don't know is how to fix the problem without making it moreso.

This is a necessary thing in a cultural sense, since the amount of crap women are handed and told to live with means if we ever get angry and stay angry, the whole thing starts to crumble.

Oh... this feels so very true but I'd just never mentally put it like that before. Well, hell. O_O

What isn't optional is accepting that you felt angry, that you were justified in feeling angry, and that no matter what the other person's perspective was, this does not make your anger any less legitimate.

Hell yeah... do you have any tips on how to do this, please? I have a huge problem with accepting and acting on it when I get angry with someone, and will often back down in the face of even the flimsiest of justifications just because I have the "see the other person's point of view" thing way too deeply ingrained in my psyche. I desperately wish I could master the art of just getting pissed, staying pissed and sticking to my guns for long enough to do something constructive and helpful-to-me (as opposed to just helpful-to-the-other-fucker) about it!

I mean, I can do it with some things - if someone hurts someone I love, for instance - but I really struggle to do it when all someone has done is hurt me. I wish I could get half as mad on my own account as I can on other people's. :(

It was hard for me to do at first, too. I think one of the things which helps is getting older, as the life experience which lets you see "you getting angry doesn't make the world end" accumulates.

That said, the first thing to do is to be able to name the emotion when you're feeling it, which means you have to learn to recognise the signs of being angry. One of the sure-fire signs for me is when I'm angry, I'm usually shedding tears - not because I'm sad, but because my body has built up a massive supply of stress chemicals which have to be excreted *somehow*. Once I realised this was a sign that I was well and truly furious and about to really lose my temper, it made me look at the whole "gods I'm so pathetic, every time I get into a confrontation I start crying" thing in a different light. Now, when I start to feel my throat close up, and put me on the edge of tears, it's a sign to back off, admit I'm getting too angry to think straight, and cool down a bit.

The second step is not to beat yourself up for the anger afterwards. This one is tricky, mostly because of the aforementioned cultural conditioning. One of the easier ways to do this is to flip the gender roles around - would you expect a man to get angry if he were in the same situation? (Here's a clue: often the answer is "yes").

The next part is really internalising the difference between an explanation and an excuse. An explanation is something which tells you why someone is doing whatever. It doesn't excuse their behaviour, and it doesn't make their behaviour justifiable. What it does is makes their behaviour understandable. An excuse is something which truly excuses (in the sense of nullifies) poor behaviour. True excuses are extremely rare. Most things people use as excuses are actually explanations - and while you may have to accept an explanation *as an explanation for their motives*, it doesn't mean you can't have a complaint about their behaviour. A man who speeds through a red light rushing his wife (in labour) to the hospital has an explanation (and probably a reasonable one) for his behaviour. However, he's still going to have to pay speeding fines, or the fines for going through the red light at the other end of things, and make sure he doesn't do it again.

The final thing to do, and the hardest for a lot of people, is being willing to accept being called a bitch or a bastard, or unreasonable, or all kinds of nasty names for being willing to stand up to someone who thinks they're entirely justified in doing whatever they want.

This is a necessary thing in a cultural sense, since the amount of crap women are handed and told to live with means if we ever get angry and stay angry, the whole thing starts to crumble.

i think that it's the same way for men, just different things. women aren't supposed to feel angry or "be strong" but men aren't supposed to feel anything, and woe to the man who doesn't like action movies, violent videogames, speaks with a lisp, or has more girl friends and not girlfriends, regardless of his sexuality.

there's a reason our society started gendering everything. unfortunately, we've continued the practice even after the need dissappeared.

Yes, the patriarchy hurts men too. I've never denied that. But the majority of men tend to feel the rewards outweigh the sacrifices, or don't realise the extent of their own privilege.

I doubt there actually *was* a reason for the gendering of everything - we certainly don't have a language which explicitly genders all nouns (unlike many others) and there are any number of terms in our language which have been asexual since their inception. The gendering of roles really got kicked off in the period following the Dark Ages, and kept gaining strength right up until the end of the Victorian era. Now we're in a situation where there's been a few strikes against the patriarchy, and it's hitting back. Hard.

if you look at the infant mortality rate then, it starts to make sense. people had to produce a lot of children, because few lived to maturity. men can't nurse children, and there was no alternative food source for infants. mommy got to stay home and raise the kids. daddy then went out and worked his ass off to support his family. there was no other way to pull it off, now that people had really settled down and were no longer living in nomadic groups. it stayed that way because it worked. then it stayed that way because it'd been that way for enough generations that people couldn't think of it working any other way. then people started realizing that while it started out pretty fair, with formula and child health improving, there was no longer a balance of power, and humans, of both sexes, are greedy. those with power don't want to give it up. when you're born to it, you feel you're entitled to it. now we're in a position where society is totally capable of balancing it out again.

i don't like the whole "privilege" thing. there's privilege to every situation, if you really want to look at it that way. i understand the point is that males at least seem to have more than females, but people tend to overlook the fact that men have almost no real reproductive rights. if a woman doesn't want to abort a child that happened because the condom broke, he has to support it, period. if there's a divorce? women still almost always get the children. husbands are abused by their wives as often as it happens the other way around. they just don't, and usually can't, do anything about it.

there's a lot of women out there who are ignorant of the inequality that still exists, and who are more than happy where they are. it's not a one sided thing.

i just hate the idea of men vs women, when really the only way to solve anything is to realize it's everyone's problem, and that everyone has things they need to work on. when we stop drawing the line based on genitals, and figure out that we're all human, and not only think that way, but act accordingly.

i'm not at all saying there's not a problem, just that the only thing an "us vs them" mentality is going to do is make it worse.

We used to do family therapy, but that was so exhausting (he used to berate us for 'avoiding our feelings' when Will and I would joke with each other to, you know, keep from sobbing BECAUSE SURPRISE, I'D RATHER LAUGH THAN CRY) I stopped going. Mom, Dad, and Will are doing much better now! (Although, they stopped going only a few months after I did, so, whatever.)

I had other things to do. Like, anything else. My dog's a better listener than that guy was, anyway, and she adores me whether I'm laughing, crying, babbling, or reading quietly.

I had a couple of fish for a while, but one of them kept murdering his roommate. (Bowlmate?) When we moved, I gave Blurp to a neighbor who gave him to a children's hospital that kept fish for the kids to look at. ...I wonder how long it took before he was the only one in the tank.